Spotting virtue: the legibility of skin in early modern drama

Abstract

This thesis traces how feminine virtue appears on the skin of early modern characters, especially in ways legible to other characters around them. In four tragedies— Shakespeare’s Othello and Hamlet, John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, and the anonymous A Warning for Fair Women— I discuss how men use the fantasy of legible skin as justification for violence against women. I establish the early modern conflation between whiteness and moral purity, then investigate how medical history, criminal justice practices, and cultural racial anxiety from the period make marked skin emblematic of besmirched virtue.